Digital Humanities Projects

 

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"Pentathlon of the Muses" (and the "ArtMap")

This website--a work-in-progress that began as a collaboration with students from MIT, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Harvard Electrical Engineering--introduces the Olympic Art Competitions according to two visualizations: a Timeline with key works and historical information; and an interactive "ArtMap" that traces the movements of art submissions according to varied filters and links. Users will be able to make their own discoveries about the movements of modern artists and their artworks by tracking national campaigns and expatriate outliers.

Above: A screenshot from the spreadsheet-version of the database, with newly added metadata boxed in red.

Above: A screenshot from the spreadsheet-version of the database, with newly added metadata boxed in red.

Olympic Entries Database

Underlying the "ArtMap" and other digital research is a database concerning the approximately 3,000 Olympic art submissions. This metadata is edited from the records on sports-reference.com in comparison with Olympic exhibition catalogues and other Olympic scholarship. I'm continually adding metadata to this digital archive, using the works' titles and the artists' bios to add comparative information about topics, politics, geography, and genre, for use in the "Pentathlon" website and in the dissertation.

Above: The top national rankings for the Olympic Art Competitions. Nations that also hosted the Olympic Art Competitions are highlighted in blue.

Above: The top national rankings for the Olympic Art Competitions. Nations that also hosted the Olympic Art Competitions are highlighted in blue.

Above: Using artist bios to compare (present or future) affiliations among artists during two European Olympiads while fascism was on the rise, we find some predictable shifts in volume, but also some more surprising nuances...

Above: Using artist bios to compare (present or future) affiliations among artists during two European Olympiads while fascism was on the rise, we find some predictable shifts in volume, but also some more surprising nuances...

Data Visualizations

The metadata for the Olympic art submissions suggests all kinds of analytical possibilities, from tracking the popularity of various sports as artistic themes in different years to comparing the presence and success of women artists on different national teams. The charts here zoom in and out, from the political affiliations of individual artists in certain years to the overall performance of national teams.